1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to a configuration of a discharge sheet tray for supporting a printed sheet, which is capable of maintaining positional relationships with a feed sheet tray, on which a sheet to be fed to a printing portion in the apparatus is placed, and with an access door for replacing an ink tank.
Although a case in which a sheet to be printed is a paper sheet is described in the specification, the sheet may be any printable sheet recording medium other than the paper sheet. In addition, when a description is given below by taking the paper sheet as an example, the feed sheet tray may be referred to as a paper feed tray and the discharge sheet tray may be referred to as a paper discharge tray.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an image forming apparatus such as a color printer, there is an image forming apparatus including, on a front side of the apparatus, a paper feed tray on which a sheet to be printed is placed, and including, near a paper discharge port, a paper discharge tray on which a printed sheet is placed. In addition, there is widely known an image forming apparatus including, on an upper portion of the paper discharge tray, an openable and closable access door for mounting and dismounting a print head and an ink tank for performing printing.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-119096 discloses a recording apparatus including a housing on which rotation hinges of a paper feed tray and a paper discharge tray are formed, and in a closed state, the paper discharge tray is accommodated in the housing and the paper feed tray functions as a cover for maintaining an internal portion of the apparatus in a shielded state. In particular, both the trays are accommodated on the same side of the housing, and hence a recording apparatus having a small occupation space is achieved. In this case, a sheet is fed from the paper feed tray located on one side of the housing to a printing portion in the apparatus, and a printed sheet is turned around and discharged to the paper discharge tray located on the same side of the housing as the paper feed tray.
However, in such a U-turn type paper feed and discharge system, if a discharged sheet comes into contact with a sheet on the paper feed tray, a paper feed resistance may be increased or fluctuated, thus causing an unfavorable paper feed such as a feed failure or a multi feed. Therefore, it is required to securely separate the sheet placed on the paper feed tray and the sheet to be placed on the paper discharge tray from each other.
Further, in order to perform operations of mounting and dismounting a print head and an ink tank as well as sheet control by access only in a direction on a front side of the apparatus, an openable and closable access cover is required. However, separate opening and closing operations of the three components including the paper feed tray, the paper discharge tray, and the access cover become troublesome, and if an order of the operations is set, this may increase a risk of an erroneous operation by a user.
Moreover, in order for the individual components to perform the opening and closing operations without interfering with one another, it is necessary to secure enough space between the components, possibly causing an increase of the apparatus in size and an increase of the manufacturing cost.